


The House With a Garden

by AndThatWasEnough



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Curtain Fic, Domestic, Episode: s15e17 Unity, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mid-life Crisis, Post-Finale, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Series Finale, Slice of Life, seriously there's a happy ending here it's okay don't be afraid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27282718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndThatWasEnough/pseuds/AndThatWasEnough
Summary: Dean comes home after a long time away.
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	The House With a Garden

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after the episode last night and initially posted it to tumblr, not expecting it to grow into...this. Things are changing rapidly in the story, and I wanted to find a way to accommodate the possibility of Cas perma-dying (OUCH) while still making it worth something and giving the characters a hopeful ending. I don't know what's coming next, but I wouldn't mind if it looked something like this.
> 
> Everyone just needs to get their acts together!
> 
> Happy reading :)

Sam and Eileen find each other.

They’re together, and they find a place with windows so they can get some vitamin D, an old farmhouse with some land because Eileen thinks a garden might be a good idea. Fresh is best, they say, and it gets her outside and Sam goes absolutely nuts for her in a sunhat for some reason. There’s a dog, and occasional small hunts (because the small ones are all there is anymore), but not often - mostly, they are settled, searching for their calm. Sam looks into grad school. Jack is staying with them and going to school, too, starts off as a freshman at the high school in their small town with a class of a few hundred. He misses Cas and his mother some days so much it’s a physical pain, but he’s ultimately happy and working through things. The kids at school think he’s kinda goofy, but he’s making friends and reads constantly. He smiles at everyone he passes in the hallway, this grieving boy, and asks Sam and Eileen for help on his homework.

Dean is in the Impala, trying to find what he’s going to do next with no more mission, doing odd jobs for people in small towns, having one-night flings, going to see Jody and Donna and the girls, fishing, just trying to let go of the rage. It’s harder than he was anticipating, and there are times he stands screaming and sobbing in the middle of nowhere, so aimless now.

It finally starts to unravel enough that Dean finally drives back to Kansas, to the House With Windows And A Yard And A Dog. He’s visited over the years, but he gets restless because he can never stay away from the road for long.

This time is different.

He’s older - they all are, and he and Sam are starting to grey. Sam is sitting on the porch typing away when he hears the familiar rumble of the Impala coming up the road. The car still looks as good as it always has, and Sam’s glad for it. Eileen is in the kitchen frowning at misshapen carrots and Jack is at school, and the car stops at the end of the drive, and Dean gets out.

Dean smiles at Sam and starts to slowly make his way towards the house. Sam stops typing, closes his laptop, and just watches his brother. He hasn’t had his hair cut in probably a few months, and he’s got a decent beard streaked with grey. When he stops at the foot of the porch he smiles, but Sam still notices how even though it’s genuine, it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Dean’s tired. He’s so tired.

Sam leads him inside without a word. He sits Dean at the kitchen table with gentle force, and Dean smiles at Eileen just like he did Sam, but she sees through it, too. But Dean keeps it up, and suddenly there’s food in front of all of them, and they’re talking about what Sam is working on and how Eileen’s garden is going and how that’s _their_ lettuce on the sandwiches and _their_ tomatoes in the pasta salad and where are you coming from, Dean? They just keep feeding him because he looks like he needs it, and Sam watches fingers bent with arthritis hold the sandwich and wrinkles that crinkle when his brother smiles at Eileen and sees the new freckles that weren’t there the last time he came to visit. Sam thinks of eons ago, how Dean came busting into his and Jess’s apartment in the dead of night one Halloween, and how now he was sitting at his kitchen table, afternoon sunlight coming through the window as Dean and Eileen laugh about some funny thing or other.

It’s half past one in the afternoon when Dean asks if he can borrow the shower. Eileen finds new towels that smell like fabric softener and dryer sheets and Sam cleans up the kitchen, wondering if Dean still has the dead guy robe somewhere in the bunker, or his duffel. They still visit the bunker, but neither of them is there full-time anymore.

It’s half past two when Dean emerges, his skin pink and smelling like fancy shampoo when he asks if he might lie down somewhere. There’s an empty bedroom they aren’t using where Sam has already put Dean’s duffel bag, and Dean changes into the same sleepwear he’s always worn. Sam hovers in the doorway, asks if he wants a glass of water or something, but Dean just asks him to crack the window and close the door when he leaves. Sam does just that.

Dean sleeps through to the next evening. Doesn’t stir once. The only proof they have he’s still there, still alive, is the window-rattling snoring.

Jack comes home from school that first day, yellow school bus shuddering down the old country road, both hands on his backpack and smiling. He smiles a lot more these days, and always has a story. Sam and Eileen are sitting on the porch swing waiting for him. They tell Jack that Dean’s there, which isn’t unusual in itself, but that there’s something going on with him. They don’t need to push, just let him come around in his own time, and let him sleep and eat from the garden and be kind. Jack understands. Still, he can’t help but crack the guest room door and watch, just watch Dean sleep, not knowing how to feel. Had Dean missed them? Had Jack missed him? Did Dean care that after everything, Jack still loved him, and did he feel the same? Jack thought to himself he had never seen someone sleep so much, so loud but so still. He worried at one point that Dean had slept for too long, but he came for dinner the second day, and Sam and Eileen looked so happy that Jack decided to be happy about it, too. He’s so happy that he talks the whole meal, barely lets anyone else get a word in edgewise, talks about school and the books he’s reading and what he’s learning and how the dog likes to play and how he likes to be in the garden and how Dean has just missed so much since the last time he visited. Dean doesn’t say anything, just smiles and nods.

Dean doesn’t talk much at all in the beginning, actually. Sam tells him that Dean does this sometimes, calls it “selective mutism”, where he just doesn’t talk for whatever reason for a while. All he does is eat and sleep and sit on the back porch watching the trees sway for a long, long time. Most of the time, though, he’s in the guest room, under the covers, sleeping or maybe reading old paperback books that have traveled with him from place to place over the years. It makes Jack nervous at first - Dean makes him nervous, and the silent conversations Sam and Eileen have about him, about maybe needing a doctor, makes Jack nervous, too - but eventually he gathers his courage and goes into Dean’s room every day after school and sits with him, sometimes on the bed and sometimes in a chair, and talks. Dean is silent, so Jack talks and talks and talks. Dean doesn’t seem to mind, watching and listening and nodding his head and making faces. Jack reads to him from books, and talks about the weather and the changing of the seasons and the projects he’s working on and how everyone at school would think the Impala is such a cool car. He takes pictures of things he sees on walks and bike rides and shows them to Dean, and shows him his collections of rocks and stamps and stickers and bottle caps. Through all of it, Dean stays silent, and Jack wonders if he would tell him to leave if he could, that Jack isn’t his family and he doesn’t want him there, but he never seems to want Jack to leave, is sometimes put to sleep by his words.

Jack has never seen anyone so tired.

And Dean doesn’t talk until Jack decides to show him his memory box.

A picture of his mother. A small and incomplete album of pictures with Cas in them, usually looking confused to be having his picture taken. The USB file with the video Kelly made for him. Cas’s angel blade, and various odds and ends from the room Cas occupied at the bunker, like the keys to his truck, which sits in the bunker’s garage unused. _This is how I remember them_ , Jack tells Dean, that this is how he keeps his mother and father close to him even though they’re gone. This is how he remembers how much they loved him, and how much he still loves them. How he wishes they hadn’t had to give their lives for his.

“My dad did the same thing.”

The voice is rough from disuse, and Jack’s first thought is that Dean needs a glass of water. The second is that he has never been so relieved to hear Dean speak. Jack is so stunned he can’t move. He nods - he wants Dean to say more.

“It’s hard,” he keeps going. “I understand.”

“I miss them,” Jack whispers. Dean nods in understanding.

“I do, too.”

Jack asks if that’s why he’s been so sad - because he misses Cas, misses his mother, misses his father. Dean tells him that he misses them, yes, that he misses a lot of people, but like Jack, like Sam, he is healing from that, has grieved for them but can live with the grief, can think of them and remember mostly good things even with their tragic ends.

He’s mourning something else, something Jack wouldn’t understand, is too young to understand.

Sam spends almost as much time with Dean as Jack does, just sitting with him and working on his laptop, clicking away and letting the lullaby of his typing put Dean back to sleep just like Jack’s words did. Sam is more direct in his questions after awhile, wants to know what it is Dean’s going through, if he’s sick, if he’s dying, if there’s anything he or Eileen can do for him, if there’s anything they can do to get him out of bed. Dean doesn’t say for the longest time, just lies there silently while Sam grows increasingly frustrated and Eileen tries to convince him to be patient.

Dean’s been there a month when one afternoon, birdsong and early crickets coming through the cracked window, he finally tells Sam that he has no idea who he is.

Sam tells his brother that’s ridiculous - that he’s been big brother and son and mother and father and friend and mechanic and hunter and teacher and chef and air guitarist and soldier and hero. He’s been good and bad and courageous and scared and hard and soft and everything in between. Sam says this with the confidence of a man who knows his brother inside and out.

“Then I guess,” Dean whispers, voice still reedy from disuse, “that I don’t know what I _want_ to be.”

Dean then goes on to tell Sam that his little brother has always known who he wants to be. That he’s always wanted to be pure and good and a lover and a fighter and a writer and a lawyer and a husband and a father and a friend. That he works harder than anyone he knows and has always had a vision for who he wants to be and how to get there, has always been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And now...they were there. At the end of the tunnel. And Sam had Eileen and Jack and a dog under one roof and a garden and a house and was always working on bigger and better things. But Dean is at the end of the tunnel, too, and he has no idea who he is or who he wants to be as the road brought him nothing. That he's jealous of Sam's sense of self.

Sam says, “Let’s drive.”

So they do. They take off while Jack is doing homework, and Eileen is gardening. She’s surprised to see Dean out of bed, but she smiles and he smiles back and tells him and Sam that she has dinner planned so they better not come back with burgers, knowing full well that they will anyway.

Dean drives. Sam navigates. It’s comfortable, familiar. They have the radio on. They stop at a little diner to pick up what Sam swears has the best food, the best burgers around, and Dean is sold, glad that Sam has a hometown he can say such things about. Before going home, they detour at an old abandoned drive-in, pull in and park like they’re about to watch a movie in 1963. Dean raises a questioning eyebrow at Sam, silently asking why this was the spot to stop at.

Sam tells him he understands. That after everything, after losing Cas, after Chuck and Amara and Billie and the Empty, after finally getting the chance to write their own story, Sam struggled, too. But he had to start somewhere. So he sifted through the old plans, the old blueprints, looked at the life he had now and tried to fit them together with the life he always wanted. He knew he loved Eileen and she loved him, and he knew Jack deserved parents, a home to grow up in. He deserved everything he and Dean and Cas never got. Sam wanted to do right by him first. While Dean took to the road, Sam went back to school. He studied things that interested him, not things that would get him a job like some twenty-something. He slowed down, even though everything was changing. What he didn’t do was expect himself to know everything right away, or that he could do it alone.

“I wish you hadn’t gone,” Sam tells his brother. “I wish you’d stayed. We can’t figure this out alone. You taught me that, you know. That night you came to get me at Stanford, _you_ taught me that.” Dean blinks and a couple tears fall. “You can’t go this alone, Dean, and I don’t know why you tried. Please stay, Dean. For the love of Christ, _please_ stay. Just think about it. I’ll help you figure it out.”

They drive home. Eileen smiles when she sees the take out bags, and says she just knew they’d do that, and she asks Dean if he’s okay. Dean could cry for her kindness.

Jack wanted to eat by candlelight for some reason, so they eat burgers and fries by candlelight, and it’s ridiculous but Jack is so happy about it that the rest of them are, too.

“You know, I heard the body shop in town is looking for help,” Eileen eventually says, like she’s been planning to say it, has maybe been sitting on the information. “I think you should look into it, Dean.” She shrugs. “If you’re planning to stay.”

Jack jumps on it. “Please stay,” he begs, repeating Sam’s request from earlier, then sits back like maybe that was too eager, remembering how Dean once said he cares about him but he didn’t see him as family. But Jack can’t help it - he can’t helping loving Dean and wanting Dean to love him back. “Please,” he mumbles to his chest. “When you’re here it’s more like how it used to be.”

He doesn’t mean hunting and being God’s puppets. He means when Cas was alive. When Jack could still hug his father and talk to him and didn’t have to play out all the conversations they could have had if he were still here, imagine his reactions to everything going on in his life, how he might want to keep bees to pollinate Eileen’s garden.

“I bet all you’d have to do is drive up in that car and the job would be all yours,” Sam smiles knowingly, and when Dean looks at him, he winks, mouthing the words ' _small steps_.'

Dean thinks. He thinks that he wants to have a home again, solid ground under his feet. He wants to know about whatever it is Sam’s writing and what his big, beautiful, hopeful new plans are, maybe bug him and Eileen for a niece or nephew. He wants to keep sleeping in that big bed in that nice room, with the down pillows and soft mattress and full white quilt, the window cracked like he likes it so he can hear everything going on in the woods behind the house. He wants to get used to the dog. He wants to keep eating from this diner and the garden. He wants the windows and the trees and the fields. He wants to get to know Eileen because she’s smart and funny and loves his brother. He wants Jack to keep talking, to show him everything he knows, wants to keep trying with him, wants to reconcile the love and the anger he feels towards him and get it right this time. He wants that body shop job, if only because the three of them think he would be good at it and hey - he sure as hell would be, if his Baby is anything to go by. He wants to spend Thanksgiving with the girls in Sioux Falls and have a Christmas tree. He wants to visit the bunker sometimes, but not too often. He wants to be able to talk about old friends and family with the people who knew them and loved him like he did.

He wants a lot of things. They all do. They all wish Castiel could fill the empty seat at their table, that John and Mary Winchester could come visit, that Bobby Singer was just a phone call away, but that can’t be. But they have each other, right here, right now, and Sam is looking into Dean’s eyes with kindness and patience and love.

That’s all any of them ever needed. From there, they would find a way.

“Okay,” Dean says, and Sam’s eyes tear up, and Eileen grabs his hand, and Jack grins big and bright.

“I’ll stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please stay safe, and thanks for reading!


End file.
